


Not Today

by roseandheather



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-20
Updated: 2011-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-27 15:23:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/297286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseandheather/pseuds/roseandheather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He didn't lose her. Not today. Missing moments from "Acolyte".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Today

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Callie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callie/gifts).



“Magnus, come in.” His breath was still short, their dash through the trees leaving him gasping, but he didn’t care. “You gotta get out of there, _now.”_

The explosion went up without warning, fire blossoming in the distance and piercing the blue sky over the treeline. The hotel collapsed in a billow of smoke and destruction.

“My God,” whispered Declan next to him, but Will couldn’t think, couldn’t believe ( _she’s alive, she’s alive, she has to be alive_ ) she was really gone. This was Helen Magnus, who’d survived two world wars, a lifetime of people trying to kill her, and a hundred and thirteen years on a mountaintop – a simple bombing wouldn’t take her out. It couldn’t. This was all wrong.

 _Face it, Will,_ said a brutal voice in his head, _not even Helen Magnus can cheat death forever. There wasn’t any time, so stop hoping and deal with reality._

 _Oh, go fuck yourself,_ he snapped at that voice, and lifted the radio. “Magnus. Kate? _Anybody?_ Magnus. Kate. Anyone, come in!”

 _Give up, Will,_ said that traitorous voice. _She didn’t make it. You’re wasting your time._

“Magnus!” He wouldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe it. “If you can read me, please respond. _Magnus!”_

The wait spun out, interminable.

“Magnus, _please!”_ He gave it one last, desperate try.

“Will.” Her voice was weak, crackling over the radio, but it was _there._ “This is Magnus, do you copy?”

 _She’s alive. Oh, God, she’s alive._

He looked away, off into the distance, and felt his heart start beating again ( _if hers were to stop so would his)_ for the first time in what felt like hours. For a brief minute he was back on a sinking submarine, kneeling over her soaked body, afraid to lose her before they’d even begun. And he knew, in a sudden moment of crystal clarity, that to lose her now would be infinitely worse. To have lost her then would have been to lose a future he’d only begun to glimpse, but if he had lost her now – if he had lost her now, the center of his world would have collapsed, and the knowledge of what he had almost lost terrified him right down to the bone.

“Magnus, don’t you _ever_ scare me like that again.” He wanted to laugh, wanted to cry ( _oh thank you thank you thank you_ ) but there wasn’t time for either. “You okay?”

“No.” Her voice was weak, weaker than he’d ever heard it ( _oh God please be all right_ ). “We need help.”

“We’re on our way,” he said, and took off running for the second time in ten minutes.

“Oi, Will! Slow down!” cried Declan behind him, but he ignored the man. He felt the brief sensation of a knife slicing through his ribcage, and the stitch was enough to make him stagger, but he breathed through it and moved on.

When he finally reached the scorched van, Helen was struggling weakly, trying to unbuckle her seatbelt. “We’ve got to help Kate,” she gasped, hands shaking as she fumbled for the buckle. “It doesn’t look good, she was closest to the glass when it blew. Will, you’ve got to – “

“Easy,” he murmured, fighting to keep his own hands from shaking as he reached around her to undo the seatbelt. “There, you’re out.”

She struggled to her feet, and much to his relief she seemed all right. She was shaking and pale, and blood was trickling down her face, but she wiped it away impatiently, and she was going to be okay.

And then it hit him that while Magnus was fine, Kate was very much _not,_ and everything turned into a frantic blur of shouted orders and scrambling for an ambulance.

~*~

The next thing he remembers clearly is pacing the waiting room at the hospital. Declan’s sitting next to him, head in his hands, muttering in some incomprehensible mix of Scots, Scottish Gaelic, and English that he can’t begin to understand, the way he has been for the past six hours. Desperately he tries to remember what happened to Kate – what had Magnus said? Collapsed lung for sure, hypovolemic shock, ruptured spleen…

It’s too much, he can’t take it, and he sits hard in the waiting room chair. Magnus is in the operating room, fighting for Kate’s life, but all Will can do is sit there and pray to a God he’s not sure he believes in that the woman who’s the closest thing he’s ever had to a sister will come out of this in one piece. When Magnus finally emerges from the OR three hours later, he’s on his feet almost as quickly as Declan is – which is saying quite a bit, since the man shoots up as soon as he sees the door crack open.

Helen Magnus has never looked small – she’s five foot nine in her bare feet, but even if she wasn’t he’d still see her as two hundred feet tall. But she doesn’t look that now; instead she looks exhausted and tiny under operating scrubs three sizes too big for her, dwarfed by the mask and puffy cap on her hair. She’s shed her operating gown, but the reddish-brown streaks on her mask and cap tell the tale well enough.

“Will,” she says, but before he can get anything out, Declan’s speaking.

“How is she, Magnus?” Declan’s shaking in his shoes, and Will can only be grateful that whatever he feels for Kate, it isn’t what Declan feels. He’s been through quite enough today.

“Still critical,” says Magnus, and the self-loathing in her voice tells Will everything he needs to know about her current state of mind. “Her spleen was ruptured in the accident, we almost lost her twice on the table before we could get enough fluids into her to stabilize her. I managed to repair most of the damage to her lungs, but she’s still on oxygen. It’s going to be touch-and-go for the next several days, I’m afraid.”

“My God,” whispers Declan, and he sits down hard. Will wishes, fiercely, that there was something ( _anything)_ he could do, but when Kate’s had the best surgeon in the world on her case, what else is there to do except wait?

And then Magnus sways on her feet, and Will can’t worry about Kate any more ( _Declan’s doing that enough for both of them)_ because the woman in front of him is going grey under her flawless skin, nut-brown curls escaping her cap, and she looks like she’ll collapse any minute.

“Magnus?” He knows too much worry is in his tone, knows how she’ll react to the idea that she doesn’t have infinite energy to do anything never mind everything, but after these last hours he can’t keep it out. “Are you okay?”

“I’m quite all right, Will,” she says firmly, but her knees are beginning to shake, and okay, he knows that sign, and takes a step closer, close enough to – “I’m just a little bit tired, I’ll be just fine after –“

 _Three, two, one,_ he thinks silently, and right on cue, her eyes roll up and she collapses into his waiting arms.

“One of these days,” he drily informs the unconscious woman he’s now carrying with her head against his shoulder, “you will learn that even Helen Magnus has her limits. But I won’t hold my breath.”

~*~

He’s napping in a chair at her bedside when she wakes up twenty-four hours later, and before she can begin her tirade, he cuts her off. “Kate’s being looked after by one of the fellows at the Mayo Clinic,” he informs her, trying to keep the exasperation out of his tone. “ _You_ are under orders to rest for the next couple of days at least. They had to pump you full of fluids to keep your blood pressure from plummeting, and apparently your electrolytes were all out of whack. Which shouldn’t surprise you, seeing as how you survived an explosion and then went on to take the lead in a nine-hour surgery!”

“I was just doing my job, Will,” she says softly, and he doesn’t know whether to kiss her or kill her.

“I almost lost you today, Magnus,” he says wearily, rubbing his eyes. “For a moment I thought I had. So don’t try to placate me.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, and she even sounds it, but there’s a smile playing around her mouth. “But you know, one day…”

“I’m going to have to carry on without you, I know,” he finishes, and now he’s smiling too. “But…”

“…not today.”

“Not today,” he agrees, and now they’re both smiling.

He knows their fragile peace will come crashing down soon enough, when they have to face what happened with Abby and the consequences of going rogue and just what she was up to during her hundred and thirteen years on a mountaintop.

But that day is not today, and so he just breathes, deep and slow. He didn’t lose her. Not today.


End file.
